From Farm to Table: Sustainability in our Supply Chain

I spent the first 18 years of my life on a peach farm in
rural Georgia. It’s usually surprising to most who see me since I’m more likely
to be spotted in a suit and tie rather than jeans or overalls – even though I’d rather be wearing blue jeans
almost any day. And actually, I’m from a long line of farmers.
My granddad started a farm after college (middle of the depression) and
excelled at running one. In recognition of his farming expertise, he was
offered the amazing opportunity to travel to Russia in the early 1960's, during
a time when it was almost unheard of for an American citizen to travel there.
In 1970, Georgia Farmer Magazine named him “Farmer of the Year.” To this day,
whenever I visit a farm, I can’t help but think of my father and grandfather,
who both taught me a lot about farming.

Ben's dad and granddad circa 1980

Beyond learning a little bit about agriculture, growing up on a farm
taught me many other “life lessons,” like how to treat people, how to work
together and how to always give a little more than someone asked for (or paid for!).
It also taught me about the critical relationship between agriculture and the
environment. I remember countless nights in the spring when by father and
grandfather were up all hours watching the temperature, worried that a late
frost could destroy our annual peach crop. Later in the summer, drought had its
impacts.

When the time came to leave for college, my roots followed
me, as I took an interest in learning more about inter-relationships between
man and the natural environment. Eventually,
this life experience, schooling and passion led me to what I do. Today, at The
Coca-Cola Company, I lead our sustainable agriculture efforts and work with our
suppliers to ensure sustainability is part of every step in the supply chain
process.

Ben harvests tea in Japan.

So how do we do this? It starts with understanding the
impacts and opportunities in our agricultural supply chain. In the last few
years, I’ve been fortunate to travel to the sugar cane fields of southern
China, the corn fields in the upper Midwest (U.S.) and northeastern China, tea
plantations in China and Japan, and coffee farms in Brazil to experience this first-hand.
Through the Coca-Cola system, we know we can influence and improve
livelihoods for hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of farmers by more
active engagement at the farm level. We sometimes do this directly but often
it’s through our suppliers and processors, who buy directly from
farmers.

A global trend in business is accountability for
sustainability along the entire length of the supply chain, from planting and
harvesting of commodities to production of products for the store shelf.

Tea plantation in Japan

Integrating sustainability into our supply chain involves
engaging with our business partners on a supplier-by-supplier basis, as well as
across ingredient and spend category streams. We partner with Suppliers on
sustainability initiatives that are relevant to the specific materials each
supplier is, well, supplying, to our system.

Suppliers are informed about what materials
are permissible or non-permissible for our supply chain. In addition, we adhere
to our global Supplier
Guiding Principles, which contain basic expectations and rules in order to
do business with Coca-Cola. We have also recently developed a set of principles
for our agricultural ingredient suppliers to address sustainability challenges
specific to agriculture (Sustainable Agriculture
Guiding Principles). And the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which explains
suppliers’ risks and opportunities in terms of climate protection, helps our
Company understand our overall “end-to-end” carbon footprint, the opportunities
that exist to reduce it and the best practices that may already be in place in
our supply chain.

Our system prioritizes three “upstream” areas that have the
biggest impact on our business: agriculture,
packaging and cold-drink equipment. Packaging efforts over the years have
included lightweighting (using less material to make our packages lighter), use
of recycled content materials, and more recently, supplier collaboration to
accelerate PlantBottle™ packaging. Cold-drink equipment efforts have focused on
ways to increase energy efficiency and decrease climate impacts associated with
our vending machines, coolers and fountain dispensers. And In July 2013,
together with World Wildlife Fund, our Company
announced
our new 2020 environmental goals which focus on sustainable management of
water, energy, packaging use as well as sustainable sourcing of agricultural
ingredients through 2020 .

Coca-Cola crew on the tea plantation.

Yet, agriculture still remains the greatest opportunity for
us. Approximately half of what we buy as a global business, including sugar,
juice, coffee and tea, is grown on a farm. And since we depend on these ingredients to
drive our business growth, we need to ensure that farms and sourcing methods
are operating as sustainably as possible. After all, agriculture has more than
its fair share of impacts in terms of water scarcity and use, carbon emissions and
human, workplace and land rights related issues. We can play a leadership role
by influencing our business partners to minimize these impacts, and we are
working to do this through the efforts I have described.

Where sustainability meets innovation is also very important
to Coca-Cola. Our business has been built by innovation – innovation in our
products and packaging. And collaboration with business partners and suppliers
will be crucial to helping us continue to innovate. As we engage more actively upstream and
downstream in our supply chain, we will be driving innovation in areas that are
tangential to our business.

Earlier this year, we invited more than 100 of our largest
global suppliers to spend the day with us thinking through how we might create
these innovations. We challenged them to
help us meet our 2020 Vision goals on agriculture, packaging and well-being. But
we didn’t stop there. We challenged them to push our Company to find new ways
of unlocking shared value – shared value for us, for them and for society. We
continue to work through those ideas to integrate the best ones into our
business relationships.

Ensuring sustainability is a value that’s embraced across
our supply chain is a way we can make an impact beyond our own operations to
improve the environment, livelihoods and society.

Ben Jordan is the Director of Supplier Sustainability at The Coca-Cola
Company in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) is the world’s largest beverage company, offering over 500 brands to people in more than 200 countries. Of our 21 billion-dollar brands, 19 are available in lower- or no-sugar options to help people moderate their consumption of added sugar. In addition to our namesake Coca-Cola drinks, some of our leading brands around the world include: AdeS soy-based beverages, Ayataka green tea, Dasani waters, Del Valle juices and nectars, Fanta, Georgia coffee, Gold Peak teas and coffees, Honest Tea, Minute Maid juices, Powerade sports drinks, Simply juices, smartwater, Sprite, vitaminwater, and Zico coconut water. At Coca-Cola, we’re serious about making positive contributions to the world. That starts with reducing sugar in our drinks and continuing to introduce new ones with added benefits. It also means continuously working to reduce our environmental impact, creating rewarding careers for our associates and bringing economic opportunity wherever we operate. Together with our bottling partners, we employ more than 700,000 people around the world.